You guys know I see a lot of documentaries (a lot of any movies!). The two that have impressed me the most in the past few years are Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Wim Wender’s Pina, which is on now at the Century 16 on State St. in Salt Lake. For early film theorist Kracauer and more specifically, Bazin, cinema had the capacity to reveal reality, not through montage or editing, but through depth of field and long takes. For me, Hollywood has taken the tremendous potential of 3D and squashed it flat (yeah, that bad). I like a spear coming straight at the audience or a chandelier blocking Beowulf’s private parts as much as the next trashy movie fan. But 3D comes into the realm of the sublime in the hands of Hezog and Wenders, and seems to bring to fruition Bazin’s assertion that, “by the power of photography [and cinema], the natural image of a world that we neither know nor can see, nature at last does more than imitate art: she imitates the artist.” We see more than we could see with our eyes through the documentary film—not just places or events, but ways of seeing and feeling.
The way the interviews were done in the film is remarkable. Dancers just look at the camera, while their (I assume) voice over speaks to some aspect of dancing for/with Pina Bausch (a German dance choreographer).
I’m not particularly into dance, and I was literally moved by the film making, the dance, and the use of 3D. See it of you can, maybe go for a documentary day in Salt Lake. I can’t imagine either the shorts at the Tower or this will stay for long.
http://www.pina-film.de/en/trailer.html